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“Your sister has been posting about Hope on social media. It’s been seen by the wrong people. I’m sending the guys from a nearby location to come get you. We’ll figure out where to go from there.”
“Which fucking sister?” His face was all hard lines now, the easiness of earlier totally gone.
Michael sighed. “Seems like Trina really doesn’t like Hope.”
No, she didn’t.I closed my eyes for just a second. Well, she’d wanted me gone. She might have arranged a permanent solution and not even known it.
“I fucking told her,” Max yelled. “We’ll be ready.” He hung up the phone, and we both stood there for a long moment staring at each other.
This was both the worst and best possible time for me to say what I had to say. We couldn’t take a step forward in this world until we did.
“Max, do you love me? If you don’t, do you think you ever could?”
He stepped back like I’d struck him and shook his head. “What?”
“You heard me.” I wasn’t going to move on this or be put off. “Answer, please, because I’m in love with you.”
His whole face fell from the angry horror of a second earlier to utter disappointment. “I think I’ve been very clear about this, Hope.”
I held up my hand. “I want you to say it to me, okay? I’m telling you that I’m in love with you. That it came on…not all of a sudden…not like wham, Hope is in love with Max…but like it was just there one day, something that happened when I wasn’t paying attention. I’m in love with you. Max, can you love me?”
He visibly swallowed. “No, baby. I’m sorry. I’m not built for love. I’m just not right.”
I held up my hand to stop him from saying whatever else he would have said. I wasn’t crying. This was too awful for tears. They’d come. Later. When I let them loose.Now isn’t the time.“Youarebuilt for love. I’ve seen it. When you’re not guarding yourself. When you’re not paying attention or convincing yourself that you’re not. All of those very good people who love you? They don’t do so in spite of you, they do so because of you. The same reason I love you. You just don’t understandyourself, and that…is dreadful.” I took a long breath. “But that’s neither here nor there. We all get to determine our futures. I’m rambling. Listen, you can’t come with me.”
He strode toward me so close, he could touch me, but he didn’t. “Hope, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not. Here’s how I see this.” Oh yes, there was the pain. Deep. All-consuming. Threatening to pull me under. Still, I continued. “You have to go back to your restaurant. If you loved me, if we were in love, then that would be one thing. But you don’t. I can’t take one more thing from you. There is a line withfriendship, and I’ve long crossed over it. It’s time for you to go.”
“For the love of god, Hope.” He shook his head. “I can decide when I need to go back to work.”
“I won’t be responsible for another restaurant of yours failing. I can’t live with it. And okay, I’m also being selfish because I have to stop being in love with you, and I can’t do that with you here. Not with you standing there, being you. All the things about you. Your big caring heart. The way you laugh. How it feels to sleep next to you. The way we watch movies together. How you know the names of every plant we pass outside. Seeing you in the kitchen. Even your stupid bad moods. I can’t stop loving you if you’re there, so you can’t go with me.”
I looked around for things to grab that I could take with me, but nothing in the house belonged to me. I’d brought nothing but the clothes on my back, and even they had come from the clinic in Germany. Well…that was easy. I’d find a way to get these clothes back to his family. “Listen, I have no right to ask for anything from you. You’ve done nothing but give and give.” I shook my head. “But I need one more favor, okay? I need you to never contact me again. I don’t have a phone, so I’ll have to get a new one, new number. Don’t find it. Never see me again, so that someday, I can live in the world and not think of us, okay?”
The tears I’d held off flooded down my face. Apparently, the gates had opened and there they were. I sucked in my breath. “You can do that for me, can’t you, Max? You can stay away.” There was a knock on the door. The guards arrived. I looked at Max one last time. He was stiff, unreadable. I had no idea what to make of him. Maybe I never had. “Goodbye. Be safe. I’ll…I’ll always be rooting for you. Thank you. For everything.”
And I ran. Like the coward I was. Away from him.
Wherever I was,whoever lived here, they lived in a house where the clocks audibly ticked. I didn’t know how he could stand it.Tick. Tick. Tick.
I got up. It was the first time I’d moved since I’d been brought to this place, and I took the batteries out of the back of the clock in my room. That was better. A knock sounded, and I opened the door. Then my mouth fell open.
Michael?
“I heard you moving,” Michael Li explained as he leaned against the doorframe. “Come eat something.”
I nodded. “I thought they’d bring me to Layla’s.”
“We can arrange it if you want to be there. I wouldn’t want to be around people and their loving family if I was feeling like you are. That’s the last place I’d want to be, no matter how much my sister loved me.”
He made an interesting point. I wiped at my eyes. “I don’t even really remember getting here.”
“You cried yourself to sleep on the plane. Barely moved when we got you off. I was getting worried, but then I remembered that you’re a survivor, kid.”
I laughed. “I’m a coward, and I don’t know if I’m a survivor, but thank you.”
He’d poured cereal for me, so I sat at the counter by the bowl. Michael came by with coffee and placed it in front of me. It wasn’t how I took my coffee, and I wasn’t sure what the cereal was. It looked like cornflakes. I was grateful for anything. Except I couldn’t help but think about the oatmeal or waffles Max would have made. Tears came again, and I pulled them back from where they threatened. How did I have any left?
